Categories

Search

The Alcohol Diaries: Whiskey Sours

We had a small bottle of Jack Daniels and a massive bottle of Jameson (it was St. Patty’s Day, after all). On Saturday night I mixed whiskey sours, which I still really like, despite what followed.

I’d started my first semester of college with five roommates and ended it with four. Tricia, whose tiny shoebox of a room had been right next to mine, transferred to another school after a chaotic couple of months. Although our replacement suitemate was perfectly nice (and caused significantly less drama), the “old suite dynamic”, as we called it, had breezed out of the city with Tricia the week before Christmas. Tricia and Carly, her friend from home, came back to Boston for a visit in the middle of March, just in time for a slushy, frigid St. Patrick’s Day weekend.

In Boston, St. Patty’s is a pretty big deal. But being underage and fake ID-less, my friends and I had to keep our shenanigans under wraps. Regardless, I had a new pair of green earrings and a healthy supply of whiskey, Tricia was visiting, and my friend Alex’s birthday meant a hearty celebration dinner at the end of the weekend – in short, everything was in place for a good time.

Friday night went well enough. We splurged on a dinner out and invited some of Tricia’s old friends over to the suite afterwards. Saturday night started out well enough too. I sipped white wine from a paper cup with Alex and his friends, laughing and trying to figure out where to take Tricia that night – she refused to leave Boston without attending at least one party. When Alex became convinced that my suitemate Emma’s name was actually Kathleen, I shepherded him to bed, promising that his friends would wake him up in time to go out later on. By the time Alex lost consciousness, the suitemates were huddled around the Jameson, ready to conquer Tricia and Carly’s last night in town. Nick, a quiet but sharply funny lover of poetry and Ke$ha, had joined the party too. Nick had been Tricia’s best friend outside of the suite and we were all glad to have him back.

When you go to a tiny, artsy school in a city full of laughably small apartments, a decent party can be hard to come by. As midnight drew closer, Tricia resigned to the fact that we’d be staying in that night – and started to get really, really drunk. Everyone else was drinking too, of course, but Tricia was the only one who was knocking back shot after shot after shot after…

Tricia was the worst drunk of us all. She was venomously mean, frustratingly obnoxious, and predictably prone to puking. It was a disappointment, but not a surprise when Tricia, who we all thought had finally gotten her life together, ended up leaning over the toilet spewing dramatic obscenities while Carly held her hair back. I was pretty annoyed and more than a little grossed out, ready to lock my bedroom door and call it a night.

But then Alex showed up to the suite. Sobbing hysterically, he relayed the night’s tragedy as I handed him tissue after tissue. Admittedly, it was a pretty shitty scenario. Alex’s friends had failed to wake him up to go out, reasoning that he was too drunk and needed to sleep it off. While that wasn’t untrue, it was the poor guy’s birthday – and he had spent it passed out while his friends partied in his absence. I tried to comfort Alex until he finally calmed down enough to go back to bed and confront his friends in the morning.

It was 4 AM. Tricia was still monopolizing the bathroom. Alex had left some chamomile tea for her, an incredibly sweet gesture in the midst of his meltdown. When I walked in to offer her some (trying not to breathe so I wouldn’t be the next to puke) she practically bit my head off. I could read the apology in Carly’s eyes, but this was just Tricia. No one was surprised. She apologized, eventually. I don’t know if she ever apologized to Nick, though. When Carly first hauled Tricia off to the bathroom, Nick just stood there, visibly uncomfortable and unsure of what to do. The party had broken up; everyone was heading to bed in hopes that this long night would finally end. Emma and I gently suggested that Nick call it a night too. I could see the hurt behind his round glasses and my heart broke for the man who had been nothing but kind to his best friend, only to see her fall to pieces once again.

What do you think?

About ANON

ANON Magazine, LLC is an online as well as bi-annual print magazine serving as a platform for creatives to share their work and ideas with an intended purpose of inspiring its readers to diverge from the traditional mindset of common style, and strive for bold originality in all areas of life.
To maintain confidentiality and to avoid bias, our articles can be written anonymously by either members of our staff or by submission. For submissions, email us at anonmagazine1@gmail.com